I used grub4dos for the first time. I got another start screen. But I have a boot problem. I am met with a message stating there is no hd. Press F1 to save changes. Exit and next boot says my cd and hd have been discovered and press F1 to save

rcrsn51 -- I tried Your receipt and now the start screen I am familiar with came up but I still have the above trouble

I have a strong suspicion that you're going to be in the market for parts for that beastie soon -- something isn't right. Even on my oldest box (a 486) the drives are recognized instantly and without fail UNLESS there is a hardware problem.

You've got any one of the following (or --hopefully not-- a combination) to worry about:

Cables and drives can be replaced easily, doubly so if you have a few to spare. CD drives are fungible, as are IDE ribbon cables (floppy cables are too, but IDE =/= floppy). Hard drives are generally fungible within their size categories. Brands don't matter really as much as people say they do.

That said, motherboard drive controller is a whole different creature. At that point, since most boards cannot boot from a PCI slot, and ISA is long gone (thankfully!) you're looking at a replacement motherboard. Unfortunately, you have either a very rare Compaq or an antique one. There are exactly three spare parts for your box on eBay and they are all optical drives.

Were it me, I'd go out and get a bigger hard drive (that 20gb Seagate you have is a bit cramped), a combo drive (reads and writes CDs but only reads DVDs) and if I could get one cheap that could fit, I'd upgrade everything else in the chassis.

...it also occurs to me that there is another point to consider. If you've never taken the time to dust this thing out, you could have a power supply that is about to die of heat stroke. 12 years of dust is not kind to a computer! Fortunately, a can of compressed air (or careful work with an air compressor) is a simple fix for all of this. Don't bother with vacuums -- the ones that are electronics-safe have no significant suction whatsoever, and the kind you use on your rug is most certainly deadly to computer components.

I'd definitely price a better power supply. You probably can be just fine with a 150-200w supply off another clunker as long as it's not too dusty. If you have to, go out and buy a new supply -- wattage doesn't matter, they don't make them low power enough anymore to be a concern. A new 500w power supply will barely notice the load from your box._________________

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